Expect Greatness: Early Anniversary Celebration

This weekend we put the cart before the horse and celebrated our upcoming 6 year anniversary.

As if we hadn't been to enough wineries in Napa, I wanted to go to a grape harvest. Bill obliged and gave me tickets to Messina Hof's Harvest festival for my anniversary gift. I was so excited!

I've always wanted to do a harvest festival and this one was so much fun! The owners are such sweethearts and made the whole day enjoyable. They gave us great tips for photo ops to take advantage of while there and even took many of our photos for us. If you are ever in the Bryan/College Station area, you must pay them a visit. www.messinahof.com

We started with an orientation that morning:

Headed upstairs to the orientation room

Our knives and some "harvest music"

Then out to pick some grapes! Bill was a man on a mission and made sure we filled our crate!

Bill hard at work

I cut too!

Check it out!

Bill found a big bunch too

Our full bin

Gotta dump the bin!

After picking every one headed in for a Lucy look alike contest and a Big Kahuna contest for the most creative grape bunch.

People entering their Kahuna grape bunches

Bill with his official tshirt

A few Lucy contestants. Lady in the blue won

A few of the Kahuna contestants

Kahuna contestants stomping along with their judge, the man in the center. He has foodie radio show.

After the contests it was time to STOMP

In the grape pit!

squishy!

Yeah, Leighton is just destined to have big feet! Runs on both sides! LOL

After our grapes were generously pressed by our feet, we took a tour to learn more about wine making process and got to see a mechanical press in action.

Finally we tasted the "fruits" of last year's harvest attendees labor, plus a couple other choice wines.

Next was a feast and then later and food and wine pairing class. We had been working and celebrating in the heat all day and ate plenty at the feast. Needless to say, we were too tired to stay for the class. But we did sneak out with a bottle of the sparkling almond and a bottle of the moscato to take home. I don't always drink sweet, but when I do it's Messina Hof (in my best most interesting man in the world voice). And if you decide to by a bottle of the 2012 Port when it's out next year, know we helped make it!

After Bill took a long nap and I took a long rest, we pretty much acted like lazy bums. We did make it out for dinner and spend a little time at the pool, but mostly we watched movies on pay per view.